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One of the most useful commands. This can save you in certain scenarios, and can be a time saver in others (will go into this later).

Once you have the networking setup (use ifconfig), then point netboot at a http or tftp server that has a copy of the ONTAP netboot image. When the system has booted, you still need to install ONTAP fully.

CFE> help netboot

SUMMARY

Boots the supplied URL off the network.

USAGE

netboot <URL>
Where <URL> is either <http or tftp>://<server>/<path to file>

netboot loads an image of Data ONTAP or Diagnostics off of the network
and executes it. It loads the image from the user supplied URL.
The URL can be either a TFTP or an HTTP network path.

Pretty straight forward. Use one to set and environmental variable, and one to unset and environmental variable! To get all the environmental variables you can use printenv

unsetenv varname

This command deletes an environment variable from memory and also
removes it from the NVRAM device (if present).

setenv varname value

This command sets an environment variable. By default, an environment variable
is stored only in memory and will not be retained across system restart.
if an NVRAM device is present, the variable is also stored there and
is persistent across reboot.

If you have a completely dead system and need to re-install ONTAP onto the flash card as well as the disks, then you’ll need to netboot the system (or other reasons you need to setup the networking!). The first step is to setup the networking for this.

CFE> help ifconfig

SUMMARY

Configure the Ethernet interface

USAGE

ifconfig device [options..]

Activates and configures the specified Ethernet interface and sets its
IP address, netmask, and other parameters. The -auto switch can be used
to set this information via DHCP.

Without any parameters, the arp command will display the contents of the
arp table. With two parameters, arp can be used to add permanent arp
entries to the table (permanent arp entries do not time out)

-d Delete the specified ARP entry. If specified, ip-address
may be * to delete all entries.

Copies data from a source file name or device to a flash memory device.
The source device can be a disk file (FAT filesystem), a remote file
(TFTP) or a flash device. The destination device may be a flash or eeprom.

There is a small subset of commands that can be access only from the boot prompt of the system. These are useful in some circumstances, but the possibilities are quite limited. In the below examples I am using a system that shows a “CFE” prompt, but this may be “Loader” or something else depending on your system.

CFE> help
Available commands:

version Print CFE version.
update_flash Updates the boot flash with the firmware image on the PC-Card.
netboot Boots the supplied URL off the network.
boot_diags Boots the diagnostic image off of the PC-Card.
boot_backup Boots the backup image of Data ONTAP off of the PC-Card.
boot_primary Boots the primary image of Data ONTAP off of the PC-Card.
boot_ontap Boots the correct image of Data ONTAP
bye Reset the system.
flash Update a flash memory device
autoboot Automatic system bootstrap.
go Start a previously loaded program.
boot Load an executable file into memory and execute it
load Load an executable file into memory without executing it
set date Set current date
set time Set current time
ping Ping a remote IP host.
arp Display or modify the ARP Table
ifconfig Configure the Ethernet interface
show date Display current time according to RTC
show time Display current time according to RTC
show devices Display information about the installed devices.
unsetenv Delete an environment variable.
set-defaults Reset all system environmental variables to default values.
setenv Set an environment variable.
printenv Display the environment variables
help Obtain help for CFE commands